Women in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: A Novel Use of Expected Utility in B ridging the Gap between the Quantitative Scholars and the Policy Pundits

Marie Besançon Boston Consortium Fellow 2002-2003

Working Paper No. 101 / 2003

© 2003 Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights Marie Besançon Working Paper No. 101

Abstract

Beginning the process of bridging the gap between the quantitative scholars and the policy community, I draw on an expected utility model to analyze the perceptions that the various parties in Northern Ireland have of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and to assess the effectiveness of their strategy toward achieving disarmament in the peace process. These perceptions were obtained through interviewing one or two members of each party involved in the Round Table negotiations in January 2003. As Northern Ireland has a party uniquely formed by women, there is the opportunity to quantitatively assess the weight that women bring to bear on the peace process both from the women’s perspectives of themselves and from the other parties in the peace process. The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition is one of the smallest parties in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless each party represented in the Assembly had two peace delegates in the Round Table Talks between October, 2002, when the Assembly at Stormont was suspended, and January, 2003 when the interviews for this study were conducted. Although the women had an initial perception of themselves as having a fair amount of relative power, overall, their influence might have been impeded due to the divided importance they placed on issues and the centrist stances they chose. From another point of view, this centrist stance may have bridged important gaps between the extremes in the negotiations. The women are no different from the other small parties in the initial power that they bring to the table; their difference lies in their positioning and the importance they place on the issues.

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When asked if ‘women are inherently more peaceful than men,’ Baroness Blood replied that they were not, but because the women were not noticed and considered ineffectual, during the ‘troubles’ they could pass freely across the battle lines from both sides.1 She also noted that women tend to deal with many issues at once particularly in negotiations. This may be one of the key factors that the Northern Ireland Woman’s Coalition (NIWC) could alter to increase their effectiveness in the peace process. If the women placed more of their energy behind one salient issue and took a more extreme stance on that issue, this strategy might help expedite the negotiated settlement.

Having women in the multi-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland in 1996 was a deeply important opportunity for women to participate in shaping both the settlement structure and the subsequent social contract between the people and the new government.2 However, two questions remain– 1) Do women take a more peaceful stance in Northern Ireland than the men? 2) If women wished to be more effective in the peace process, what strategies should they adopt?

The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) ‘is the only political party in the world founded by women with elected representatives’.3 It is a “cross-community” party (that is, it crosses religious lines) with both women and men as members. Interviewing assembly members from all the parties participating in the Round Table Talks (between the suspension of the Assembly at Stormont in October, 2002 and January, 2003 when this study took place) provided the opportunity to quantify the participants’ perceptions of the power and influence of the women as a unique party in the peace process and to assess the effectiveness of their negotiation strategy. The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) was formed in 1996 after several failed attempts by the Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform to ensure that women be included in the All Party Talks to determine the future of Northern Ireland. The founders decided to form a cross-community alliance focusing on inclusion, equality, and human rights. The founders campaigned furiously, and got two women elected in May 1996 with enough votes to put the NIWC among the top ten parties.4The women immediately had to overcome verbal abuse when participating in the ensuing Forums – exemplified by calls from the men of ’Sit down you silly women!’ and ’Why don’t you stand by your man?’ The men also would ‘moo’ when the women walked in or tried to speak. The women retaliated by singing ‘Stand by Your Man’ and posting the names of the men who ‘mooed’ on the personal insults notice board each time it occurred.5 Although the newspapers reported these episodes of the men’s behavior during these events as appalling, the women still had considerable prejudice to overcome in establishing their place in the political realm.

1 May Blood is first woman from Northern Ireland to be given a life peerage (House of Lords, Westminster) and one of the founders of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. May Blood comes from the working class, was head of the Early Learning Center in the Shankill (Protestant militant) district of Belfast, but resigned her full time post to use her position in the House of Lords to speak up for working-class people at the traditional home of the aristocracy. INTERVIEW on January 20, 2003- Belfast, NI. 2 The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition: Origins, (http://www.niwc.org/aboutus.asp) 3 Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Dec. 2003. ‘About Us’ (http://www.niwc.org/aboutus.asp) 4 http://www.niwc.org/ 5 Interview with Monica McWilliams, MLA

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Northern Ireland has not previously had a good track record in electing women. However, after the 1998 elections following the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland, fourteen (13%) of the newly elected 108 assembly members were women. There was one woman among the ten permanent secretaries heading government department, 19 percent of the Local Councilors were women, five District Councils had a woman as mayor, and four District Councils had a woman as deputy mayor. Northern Ireland currently has 3 women Members of Parliament and women hold 31 percent of public appointments.6 The Assembly Member numbers were valid until the government was suspended in October, 2002 and subsequently dissolved in April, 2003. New elections are slated to take place November 26, 2003.

Each party had two members participating in the Round Table Talks to resume devolution of the Assembly at Stormont, between October 2002 and January 2003 (when the data for this study was gathered). The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Ian Paisley, refused to participate in talks with any parties they believed to be still involved with paramilitary groups, chiefly Sinn Féin and the Provisionals (PIRA – Provisional Irish Revolutionary Army). From twelve interviews with MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) and deputy MLAs, I obtained data for expected utility modeling of the disarmament issue and information on each of the parties’ views and positions. The disarmament issue has been one of the major issues blocking the peace process since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Two deputies to the MLAs from two different parties had the most time to spend on the data collection and grasped the concept of the quantification the most quickly; therefore these two data sets were of the highest quality and had the highest potential formodeling accuracy. The deputies both had several hours to spend on the data collection and both were available for follow-up clarification by phone and email. These deputies were present during the Talks and privy to party position information. The other data were obtained from the Assembly Members (MLAs) themselves and from the head of one of the parties, however, these interviews were only 45 minutes to one hour long. Within these time constraints, it was necessary to win the trust of the MLA, explain the model and the data process, and extract the data itself. This was a difficult task. Nevertheless, each of the participants in the study had a credible idea of how strong the women (that is, the NIWC) were relative to the other parties, and a strong grasp of where each party stood with regard to disarmament of the IRA. Overall, the men interviewed gave the women’s party a slightly lower power rating than the women from the NIWC that were interviewed gave the NIWC. However, the women interviewed from parties other than the NIWC viewed the NIWC as considerably stronger than did either the men interviewed or those women in the NIWC with whom I spoke.

After briefly summarizing the model, I use a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the opinions and data on the power and influence of the women’s party in the Round Table talks. As the talks did not follow the pattern of full party participation after January 2003, but were frequently bilateral talks between Gerry Adams (Sinn Féin - the political wing of the Irish

6 http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/history/stateapart/a

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Republican Army) and Tony Blair (the British PM), or talks among Gerry Adams, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern (Irish PM), and David Trimble (the largest Unionist party – Ulster Unionist Party), it was less likely than if all parties had been engaged in all talks that the data would present an accurate prediction. However, two of the data sets that were the most comprehensive from the two deputies (both who had post graduate degrees and who quickly grasped the quantitative concept) were used to assess the NIWC’s influence. The initial data from the NIWC deputy were used to perform a ‘base case’ analysis predicting the outcome of the negotiations. The data were then altered by leaving out the NIWC to see if they made a difference in the negotiations with their current strategy. Secondly, the position and salience of the NIWC were altered to see how this change in strategy would affect the outcome. Lastly, a strategy of allying the NIWC with one of the other parties and changing their positions and salience was assayed. How these ‘experiments with the numbers’ to assess the influence that the women in the NIWC bring to the table is explained in more detail in the following sections.

II. The Model

The study is loosely based on the dynamic game theoretic model of Bueno de Mesquita and his colleagues. The mathematical equations, theory, and assumptions are described in detail in a special issue of International Interactions (Bueno de Mesquita, 1997). The expected utility approach assumes that negotiators have preferences that are ordered and that they behave based on their own perceptions of reality. The model also assumes that the negotiators are ‘rational net gain utility maximizers’ who adjust their positions across rounds of negotiations in response to perceived gains and losses. The actors involved in the negotiations are assumed to have complete information, but their perceptions of outcomes are affected by 1) their risk propensity and 2) the importance they attach to each element of the problem. Within these assumptions and with the data described below, the equations simulate the results of rounds of negotiations between the stakeholders.

The model is based on Banks’ (1995) microeconomic theorem of monotonicity of expectations to anticipate the intensity of conflict, and on Black’s (1958) median voter theorem. Following Banks’ theorem, conflict escalates in political disputes as the ‘votes’ of relevant participants become farther apart on the same issue, and agreement is more likely to occur the closer the parties’ positions. Black’s conclusions show that the median position is the winning outcome under majority rule. This model treats the votes as the weight or influence exerted by the stakeholders in the negotiations, which in this case are the parties in the Round Table Talks. Influence in the Northern Ireland case is governed by several factors: 1) size of the party (as in percentage of representation), 2) affiliation with paramilitary groups, 3) importance of the issues, and 3) veto power of stakeholders such as the British Government, which unilaterally called for a suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly in October, 2002.

Since time was a factor in the data collection, I chose only one issue for study – the critical disarmament issue. The first interview established the importance of resolving this single issue before the Northern Ireland Assembly could reconvene. However, given a complete assessment of other relevant issues --such as policing reform, the bill of rights, or the release of prisoners --

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the disarmament issue might well have been more easily resolved if one of the other issues had been resolved previously.

In my interviews, I asked each MLA or deputy to identify on a continuum of the disarmament issue certain accommodation points between no disarmament (scaled at ‘0’) and complete disarmament and disbandment of the IRA (scaled at ‘100’) in the order that they thought marked greater or lesser progress toward disarmament.7 They were asked to score each position as to how far it was from zero. They were then asked to identify each of the stakeholders either participating in, or having influence on, the current Round Table Talks and, for each stakeholder, to identify their policy positions on the disarmament issue and a relative estimate of their power or influence. Finally they were asked to identify how salient or important the disarmament issue was to each party or stakeholder vis à vis other issues in the current political process. The power, position, and salience measures were all based on a relative scale of 1 to 100. The power and influence that the parties or stakeholders bring to the talks reflects the resources of each relative to the other. The salience (importance) of the issue indicates the level of energy, time, and resources the stakeholders are willing to devote to achieving their goals for disarmament relative to other issues such as education or human rights.

The position on the policy continuum is the stated policy on the disputed issue each of the parties held upon entering the negotiations. Such data from experts produce effective forecasts only if the expert knows the critical issues of the debate and can place them relatively accurately on continuous scales. This aspect of the data collection was the most difficult given the time constraints.

A study by Feder (1995) shows that while the experts may disagree with the predictions of the model, a systematic assessment of the performance of the model with a large number of cases finds that in general the data tend to vary only slightly and do not produce appreciable differences in the model forecasts. Unfortunately, since the constraints of this study required a rapid data collection from as many stakeholders as possible, there was considerable variation in the issue continuums and the estimated salience of the issues among stakeholders, although the power of the parties correlated quite well among estimators.

The exercise of collecting policy issue continuums from several of the parties (eight out of ten) did reveal the participants’ differing perceptions of accommodation points on the issues and their differing assessments of how far along the agreement had progressed (a detailed assessment of this subject must await another paper). The most detailed possible accommodation positions were data from the largest Unionist party deputy. Both the UUP and Sinn Fein assessed themselves of having made huge accommodations already. This was not surprising in that they were the parties most closely negotiating. No party except the NIWC considered the Loyalist

7 The Good Friday Agreement (1998) states that: “All participants accordingly reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations. They also confirm their intention to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission, and to use any influence they ma y have to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years following endorsement in referendums North and South of the agreement and in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement.”

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paramilitary forces as having any significant influence on the talks, yet shortly after the interviews took place, there were several incidents involving killings or diffused bombs from the Loyalist groups. It was not clear why the other parties ignored the influence of the Loyalists. Data from the most extreme right Unionist party (Democratic Unionist Party - DUP) are missing because both of the MLAs from this party backed out of their scheduled interviews. Although the DUP did not participate actively in the talks, none of the participants had any doubt that the DUP was an important stakeholder in the negotiations, with considerable power and influence.

The following section summarizes the differences each of the parties had with regard to the power perceptions, the influence, and the positions of the women.

III. What the men think about the women and what the women think about the Women

Regardless of how they outlined the policy position continuum, all the parties (except the PUP, the party associated with the loyalist paramilitaries) viewed the NIWC as being more centrist (not as close to complete disarmament) than they viewed themselves. Even the radical Republicans, who most parties scored as quite centrist, considered the NIWC as more centrist than they. All of the parties except the two parties connected with paramilitary groups (Sinn Féin – connected to the IRA and the Progressive Unionist Party – connected to Loyalist paramilitaries) scored the position of Sinn Féin as closer to the ‘no decommissioning position’ on the continuum than they scored NIWC. Both the parties associated with the paramilitary groups (Sinn Féin and the PUP) stated that Sinn Fein’s position was more advanced toward full decommissioning than the NIWC. In summary, everyone except the parties connected to paramilitary groups viewed the parties connected to the paramilitary groups as less cooperative than the women (NIWC). The parties connected to the paramilitary groups considered Sinn Féin to be ‘more cooperative’ than the women (NIWC) and the PUP ‘less cooperative’ or ‘equally cooperative’ (Figure 1).

(Figure 1)

Both of the NIWC representatives with whom I spoke said that full implementation of the Patten reforms to the police force was of paramount importance to the decommissioning process. One of them said that the ‘correct accommodation’ for Sinn Féin (the IRA’s political wing) would be for the Sinn Féin to say that they would ‘join the policing force’. This move, in her estimation, would allow the IRA to ‘stand down’ without losing face. The NIWC considered a move to join the policing force to be a position closer to full decommissioning on the policy continuum than ‘declaring the war to be over’. Apart from the PUP, the NIWC’s position appeared to be more supportive of the IRA (that is, closer to ‘no decommissioning‘) than each of the other party’s self- stated position, including Sinn Féin’s. Though some parties viewed the positions of the other parties as closer to the ‘no decommissioning’ extreme of the continuum than either their own position or the NIWC’s, everyone, including the women of the NIWC, indicated that the women’s party clearly took a very centrist position.

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As for the views of the power that each of the parties wielded in the Round Table talks, there was a high correlation of these data between respondents - in spite of the rapidity with which some of the data were gathered (see Appendix I). On average, the women, both from the NIWC and from the other parties, viewed the NIWC as being about twice as powerful and about twice as influential (influence = power x salience) as the men did. The women interviewed from the Republican Parties (Sinn Féin and SDLP – Social Democratic Labour Party) gave the NIWC much stronger power scores than the NIWC gave themselves (see Table 1). The women of the NIWC had about the same estimates of their power and influence as the men of other parties had of them.

(Table 1)

One of the NIWC representatives told me that she thought she ‘should’ say that disarmament was the most important (salient) issue, even though she did not really think it was the most important issue. She saw issues of education, health, and employment as more important (I coded her as saying the salience was 80 out of 100, however did not use her data for this study). One woman representative from Sinn Féin, and one man representative from the PUP (Progressive Unionist Party) also told me that other issues such as education and employment were more important than disarmament. The other parities unequivocally considered disarmament the most important issue. The woman MLA from the SDLP (Social Democratic Labour Party - republican party) gave a very high estimate of the strength of the NIWC. She also judged the disarmament issue to be very salient to the NIWC - incorrectly if we compare this estimate to the salience estimated by the women of the NIWC themselves. The woman MLA from Sinn Féin initially estimated the NIWC to be as strong as 20 out of 100 but subsequently reduced her estimate to 5. I believe that her estimates and those of the SDLP representative would have been closer to those of the other participants had I had more time to explain the concept to her. Nevertheless, her initial response of strong relative power is salient information.

IV. The perspective of the NIWC negotiator

Oddly, the ‘Loyalist paramilitaries’ was not an issue in the forefront of most of the negotiators’ minds. The only ‘expert’ who included any of the Loyalist paramilitary groups in her data set was the NIWC deputy MLA. This expert was sitting in on the Round Table Talks and I use her data set to predict the outcome of the multiparty negotiations and to quantitatively assess the NIWC’s effect on the Talks. She considered the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Anti Agreement Loyalists, and the PIRA (Provisional IRA – the main Irish Republican Army group connected to the political wing Sinn Féin) all as having influence on the peace process and on the Talks.

One of the issues closely related to the decommissioning is implementation of the Patten Policing Accords. These resolutions were designed to integrate the Catholics and particularly some of the ex-paramilitaries into the police force as part of the transfer of police power from the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) to the newly formed PSNI (Policing Service of Northern Ireland). This was to ensure that the police force was not entirely in the hands of the Protestants

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and the British. Most of the MLAs considered a declaration by the IRA of ‘standing down’ to be a significant step toward complete disarmament. The policy continuum identified by the deputy from the NIWC is outlined in Figure 2.

(Figure 2)

The NIWC deputy indicated the opening position of the women’s party to be that the Patten reforms to the policing force should have been implemented for the Assembly to resume. This position was more moderate (closer to middle between no decommissioning and full decommissioning) than the Unionists (UUP DUP) and more conservative (toward full disarmament) than the Republican parties, the Loyalist paramilitaries, and their political representatives (Progressive Unionist Party - PUP). This was a position between the extremes. The numerical interpretations of the stated positions, the relative power, and the importance that each of the stakeholders place on the disarmament issue - in the opinion of the NIWC deputy – are reported in Table 2.

(Table 2)

The overall outcome of the negotiation simulation was a consistent prediction of a public declaration that the war is over and the IRA is standing down. This maintained during eight rounds of negotiations. The position changes of each stakeholder over eight rounds of negotiations as initially simulated by the model from the NIWC deputy’s data are shown in Table 3A below (and Appendix II for a 3-dimensional graph).

With these initial positions and salience of each of the parties, the forecast of what would happen was that Sinn Féin would not agree to full disarmament, but would remain at the position of some decommissioning with an independent body verifying. The UK government would remain at a position of accepting a public declaration from the IRA that the war is over and that they are standing down. The simulation indicates that the other stakeholders would maintain sharp differences, particularly the paramilitary parties. This analysis also shows that there are no particular opportunities to change this outcome.

To test what would occur if the women’s party was eliminated from the talks, I ran the model without the NIWC and found that it made no difference whatsoever if the NIWC was totally absent from the negotiations (See Table 3B) given the women’s current strategy. However, using the data gathered from the man deputy of the largest Unionist party, I ran the same experiment, which showed the NIWC to have an influence of 2 percent toward disarmament. This may seem like a logically very small influence, given the small size of the NIWC, however, using the UUP data again, I tested the model with and without the influence of the major government actors (the ROI, the UK, and the US) to see if the parties could reach an agreement on their own without the ‘heavy hitters’. This assay showed that the process moved backward only slightly on the policy continuum (4 percent) without the Irish, British, and American governments involved. This in and of itself was an interesting finding, (though I don’t report the tables here) because the model shows that a great deal of what happens next is in the hands of Northern Ireland’s elected

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officials.

(Table 3 A & B)

Another question under consideration for which I use the model to simulate an answer is: Could it be that women’s centrist strategy is less effective than concentrating their efforts on one salient issue and taking a more extreme stance? And could a different strategy help the issue of decommissioning move toward full implementation? I do not review feminist literature on the ‘peaceful nature’ of women here, nor review any of the business literature on women in negotiations - I rather use modeling and anecdotal information to explore the NIWC’s current 8 negotiation strategy.

To test the effects that a more extreme stance on the part of the women and greater importance placed on the issue, would have on full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, I increased the women’s position to advocating full decommissioning (95) and made disarmament the most important issue on their agenda (90) which increased the overall outcome to one of agreement of implementation of the Patten accords (8% advance) [see Table 4A, Figure 2, and Appendix III]. Though this proposed alteration still did not change the position of the radical Republican party - Sinn Féin – it did affect greatly the positions of the paramilitaries. With a change in position and salience for the women (they cannot effectively change their power without an election or association with paramilitaries), the overall process toward complete decommissioning would move ahead by 8%, the Anti Agreement Loyalist paramilitary groups would soften considerably from their extreme positions of no decommissioning, and the IRA would move into complete alignment with the overall group forecast of implementation of the Patten Accords (improving by 51%). This means effectively that the IRA would be willing to put down their arms and join the policing force.

(Table 4 A & B)

Overall, the simulation implies that with a stronger stance, the women clearly would have an effect on aligning the paramilitaries more closely with the elected parties. This is not surprising since the view of all the parties is that they are more sympathetic to the paramilitaries as shown by their positions vis à vis everyone else’s views.

Finally, to test the effects of an alliance with the smallest Unionist/Loyalist party that is the most radically against disarmament, I changed the NIWC’s and the PUP’s (Progressive Unionist Party) positions to full decommissioning (95) and their salience to a very high priority position (90) [see Table 4B, and Appendix IV]. This had the effect of moving the overall forecast to an agreement of full decommissioning (forward by 15% toward decommissioning), this also would theoretically coax Sinn Féin into a ‘declaration of standing down’ position, and it would align the

8 There is a fairly large body of lit erature with survey data on the attitude toward women and men on violent solutions to conflict. The business community has done some work on women and men in the world of business negotiations: Reader in Gender, Work, and Organization, ed. by Robin J. Ely, Erica Gabrielle Foldy, and Maureen Scully (Blackwell, 2003); ADD RECENT BOOK

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Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries into almost complete agreement with Sinn Féin. Though this alignment between the PUP and the NIWC might be possible because of good communications between two of their MLAs, it is not necessarily likely.

This important result shows that influence on the peace process is not entirely dependent on power. The smaller parties can wield quite a bit of influence on an outcome if they are particularly ardent in their positio ns. Though party stakeholders (particularly those with no military backing) cannot change their ‘power’ (without an election), they can change both their salience and their positions, and they can ally themselves with another party. The PUP is connected to a paramilitary group and the women are shown to wield a great deal of influence with the paramilitaries. The NIWC might also choose to ally with a smaller party such as the Alliance Party. The larger parties often presume upon their power and fail to give much importance or attention to an issue, thus allowing space for the smaller parties to influence negotiation outcomes with different strategies.

V. What has happened

Several structural issues have influenced the outcome of the ‘Talks’ so far. Since January 2003 more bilateral talks between Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) and Tony Blair (British PM) have occurred than multilateral talks at the Round Tables. Also more talks between Gerry Adams, David Trimble (Ulster Unionist Party leader), and the two heads of state – Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. Thus, the rounds of negotiations simulated do not follow the model precisely. Most recently (October, 2003), the non military Republican party – the SDLP (Social Democratic Labour Party: Republican party holding the largest number of seats on the Assembly until suspension) – protested the bilateral talks between the smaller Republican Party, Sinn Fein and the UK government. Early in the year, likewise one of the Loyalist parties had withdrawn from the ‘Talks’ complaining that the real negotiations were going on between Tony Blair and Gerry Adams.

Just prior to this study, the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) - the paramilitary group associated with the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) - ordered its political representatives to cease further contact with General John de Chastelain (from the International Independent Decommissioning Board).9 The Unionists claimed that the British were striking secret deals with Sinn Féin. The UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UDA (Ulster Defense Association) as well as some of the smaller Loyalist parties like the Red Hand Commando have refused to surrender any weapons so far - yet little attention was paid to them in negotiating. 10 The PUP accused the Provincials (IRA) of targeting the ‘pro- union’ population, and Sinn Féin accused the British government of ignoring Loyalist violence claiming that this was a key reason for the slow pace of IRA 11 disarmament.

9 Irish Times January 18, 2003. p. 6 10 ibid 11 Belfast News Letter, Jan 21, 2003 (p.6), The Guardian, Jan 18, 2003

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Early in the year, the main negotiating Unionist party (UUP – David Trimble) took an extremely ‘hard line stance’ that the IRA must stand down, and that they must fully disarm and disband before the Assembly should reconvene. They further wanted to add ‘sanctions’ against Sinn Féin if they were to break the agreement. This caused an outcry from Sinn Féin who accused the UUP of adding more blocks to peace progress and insisted that this was not part of the Good Friday Agreement. But, by October, David Trimble had agreed to resume the peace process without complete disarmament of the IRA and to work with Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland 12 Assembly.

Current compromise as of October 2003 is that the IRA must formulate a statement worded such that it would convince the Unionists that it truly is winding down as a paramilitary force. The Unionist must make a commitment to accept the devolution on a reciprocal agreement that Sinn Fein would endorse the PSNI (Policing Service of Northern Ireland). Lastly, the IRA must engage in a persuasive ‘third act of decommissioning’ (they previously placed a few weapons out of commission under the watchful eye of General de Chastelain in October 2001, and April 2002).13 The UUP deputy from whom I obtained the most comprehensive data, indicated that the agreements would have to be a trade-off between the disarming and the policing board changes.

To date, the IRA has made a third act of decommissioning. This is the precise prediction of Sinn Fein’s position from the simulation with the NIWC deputy’s data. The simulations imply that if the NIWC had taken a different tack, the Loyalist paramilitaries would have been more willing to move toward decommissioning, which in turn would have given greater assurances to the IRA and moved the peace process further toward disarmament. An alignment with one of the smaller parties would potentially have given an even greater likelihood of a more speedy solution.

While mathematical modeling is very useful for solving multiparty negotiation impasses, for identifying stable solutions for settlements, and for plowing through ‘emotions ’ to reach logical dispassionate conclusions -- it is the hearts and minds of the people involved in the situations that must evolve and change.14 Women can unquestionably participate in facilitating this change, as can men whose minds are set on changing the past and advancing the future causes of peace, political equity, and economic equity.

Addendum:

In the November elections, Sinn Féin became the majority Republican Party and the DUP won the majority Nationalist seats, while the NIWC lost all their seats, effectively polarizing the issues. As the model is a ‘short term’ tool, the current power and position structure would be entirely an entirely different dynamic.

12 October 11, 2003 Deutsche Presse-Agentur 13 October 20, 2003 The Irish Times 14 Personal interview with Monica McWilliams, MLA from NIWC

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Banks, Jeffrey (1995). ‘Singularity Theory and Core Existence in the Spatial Model,”

Journal of Mathematical Economics. Vol. 24 (6). p 523-36.

Belfast News Letter, Jan 21, 2003

Black, Duncan (1958). The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce (1997). “A Decision Making Model,” International Interactions, Vol 23, Nos. 3-4, pp. 235-266.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 11, 2003

Feder, Stanley (1995). “Factions and Policon: New Ways to Analyze politics.” In Bradford Westerfiedl (ed.), Inside CIA’s Private World: declassified Articles from the Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955-1992, New Haven: Yale University Press

The Guardian, Jan 18, 2003

The Irish Times, January 18, 2003

The Irish Times, October 20, 2003

Northern Ireland Women's Coalitiion: Common CauseThe story of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (Published by NIWC)

Ely, Robin J., Erica Gabrielle Foldy, and Maureen Scully, eds. (2003). Reader in Gender,

Work, and Organization. Blackwell.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/history/stateapart/a

13

Appendix I

Correlation between data sources on power

14

Appendix II

15

Appendix III

16

Appendix IV

17

Figure 1. How the parties see the women (NIWC) vis à vis the paramilitary associated parties (Sinn Féin and PUP)

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Table 1: View of Power and Influence of NIWC

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Figure 2: Position continuum from the perspective of the NIWC negotiator

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Table 2. Opening Position, power and salience of parties in the Round Table Talks from the view of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition Expert.

21

Table 3: Base Case estimate of model and second estimate leaving out the NIWC.

22

Table 4: Changing the position and the Salience of the NIWC. Alliance with an altered PUP.

23